Perhaps, it's a bit late and nothing really new. But I would look what dmesg thinks your cdrom is. It must say "hdc: ...(then goes the brand of your cdrom)". I mean, if it says your cdrom is "hdd", then it's even so. It would mean your (ide!)cdrom is linked with the node /dev/hdc(hdd).
About ide-scsi option(scsi emulation): it's only here for CD-burning on ide cd-burners, and not for accessing data CDs on IDE cd-drives. The corresponding SCSI dev node will be used for burning. So, the /dev/cdrom must be a link to your /dev/hdc. It must be mounted on whatever mount point you choose(like the way you did it).If it doesn't, and the disk is there, it could be: bad disk or/and broken drive. Or, a bug in the "mount" utility? Not likely as thousands use it without running into such problems.
If the dmesg command output says (your brand name)CDROM is here as "hdc", then it can recognize the device as ide cdrom drive. It must mount,then, unless for the reasons mentioned above.
Another thing one would check is this master/slave jumpers on the drive itself, but yours I assume to be a laptop.Don't think you must check the jumpers.